On second thought…no

When you try to write and live with your whole heart and soul, you’re not exactly protected.

The extent and persistence of vulnerability startled me the other day. A friend commented on my honesty and what I write in this blog. I suddenly felt more than just naked: I felt like a dissected specimen sprawled on a piece of wood, my skin pinned down and all my insides exposed.

(Oh, and I felt stupid too. For creating this. For allowing it.)

I immediately wanted something to cover myself with. Secrets. Deception. Shadows. I wanted to be someone else. A dangerous mystery.

Under normal circumstances, you have to get to know someone quite intimately to know their soul, their love and their madness. With writers it’s different. We reveal everything. This blog, like others, is an open invitation: ” By the way, if you have a moment, here is my soul!”

Oh. My. God.

No, no. This just won’t do. To be this open isn’t good. And in life, to love much and completely is a bad idea too. To trust is ever worse. Instead, you have to put up walls and play games and pretend. You have to live in careful measures. Be suspicious and selfish. You have to provide minimal doses of whatever it is…make yourself and your honesty scarce.

I got very excited I was going to do this thing. On the occasion of my birthday a new image! I was going to be a powerful and dangerous mystery. Keep everyone guessing. Hide. Tuck a lie behind every pretty word and work on selling it well. Oh it was going to work out brilliantly.

But wait…

It means lying. It means never knowing connection or trust. It means never being truly seen or loved. It means wearing chains you made yourself.

It means lying.

Yeah…no, the lying is a deal breaker. Besides, it’s not all that often we come across someone real who stays real, is it…

As for our own “perfection”…it’s hardly ever that. Yes we can be beautiful and honest and vulnerable, but there’s the other side too. We are all, in our own ways, difficult and tedious and impossible. And as long as we don’t lie or act cruel, we remain an ever evolving mystery looking to find balance and create something worthwhile in this world. The only thing is that we’re not dangerous. As in, we’re not ok with hurting others.

But wait…maybe I’m wrong.

A long pause. A long birthday. Panic.

Figures on my birthday I’d come across these lines….

“If you want to make sure of keeping it [your heart] intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ― C.S. Lewis

And so, today, on second thought, it’s no to the fake, “safe”, half-measures and walls. Everything has to stay real. Flaws and beauty and all. I for one can’t be someone else. Maybe it’s safer and more advantageous, but by god, it’s such a cheap way to live. Pitifully cheap.

Of course it feels like the gods are looking down at me at this very moment and saying: “Stubborn girl, you will never learn, will you?” And then they wink.